Fighting in the north leaves behind severe environmental damage
Galilee blackened by fires from rockets; Lebanese coastline under threat from oil spills caused by IAF strike.
By Zafrir Rinat and Haaretz CorrespondentIsrael and Lebanon will long bear the environmental scars left behind by the fighting in the North, with the Galilee region in Israel and the Lebanese coastline, both major tourism locations, now requiring urgent rehabilitation: The Galilee has been blackened by fires caused by rockets hitting the region; and the Lebanese coastline is under threat from a large oil spill caused by Israeli air strikes on a fuel installation south of Beirut.
Lebanese officials say the country's coastline was under threat from the worst ecological disaster in its history as a result of the Israeli airstrikes on the fuel installation. "The contamination that has accumulated, some of it on the seabed, is threatening animals such as turtles and tuna," the Lebanese environmental organization, Green Line, noted this week. "The beautiful white sands that we will need for tourism so that the country can recover have become toxic and useless."
Some 10,000 tons of fuel have leaked from the tank hit in the Israeli air strike; the spill initially stretched some 70 kilometers, but the latest figures from the United Nations speak of a 150-kilometer-long oil slick that is threatening the Syrian coast too.
The UN notes, too, that a change in weather conditions could see the spill move southward in the direction of the Israeli coastline. UN and European Union experts are expected in the region soon to put together a plan to deal with the contamination.
In Israel, meanwhile, officials from the Israel Nature and National Parks Protection Authority and the Jewish National Fund have yet to fully assess the extent of the damage caused by fires in the Galilee as the result of Hezbollah rocket strikes. Clearly, however, tens of thousands of dunams of forest and woodland have been destroyed by fire, causing severe ecological and landscape damage.
During the course of the fighting, JNF personnel dealt with some 600 incidents of fire; and the organization is preparing to allocate tens of millions of shekels to a campaign to rehabilitate and replant forests on the Naftali Mountains (west of Kiryat Shmona), in Beit Keshet (Central Galilee) and in Biriya (near Safed).
Officials at the INNPPA, on the other hand, are adopting a different approach, and plan to allow the natural woodlands and brush to rehabilitate themselves. "Natural woodlands require dozens of years to recover," says Didi Kaplan, the INNPPA's ecologist for the North. "The Katyushas' fires also damages areas of the Har Meron Reserve that were burned in 1978 and have yet to recover to this day."
According to Kaplan, "It is not just a matter of direct damage during the course of the fire. Tens of thousands of dunams of grassland were burned on the edges of the Golan Heights. I assume that the antelope that live in the area fled, but their source of food for the coming months has been damaged."
Kaplan believes that the grasslands on the Golan Heights will recover quickly, already after the coming winter. Regarding the woodlands, the INNPPA has no plans to intervene in their recovery but will have to take measures to prevent landslides in the winter.
During the course of the fighting, there were concerns in Israel regarding severe ecological damage as a result of rockets strikes on installations in the Haifa Bay area that contain hazardous materials, ammonia in particular. While no rockets struck such installations, Environment Ministry and Haifa region officials have noted the need to set up a number of protected sites for storing the ammonia, which, they say, is needed by many industries around the country.
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Aren't people a part of the natural environmen? To Israel is seems grass is more important than human lives (non Israeli lives of course). I must sincerley praise the Jewish bloggers that have the graciousness to side with nature and their fellow man. Shalom and peace to all.
To Howard, Your analogy about killing a few good cells in order to kill a cancer cell is a bit off base. It is Israel that is the cancer in the middle east. The mutant cell that does not belong, takes hold and wont let go, killing anything in its path. Lets hope that the cancer rates for everyone including IDF don't go through the roof because of the depleted uranium rounds being used and the oil which is sure to find its way up the food chain.
The Bush US blessed the Israeli attack in May to clear the way for an attack on Iran. Israel was created by the US and UK to control energy. The US should pay for the war crimes caused by the Plan New American Century (PNAC).
I have yet to see any media reporting on the US-supplied uranium munitions used by the IDF in Lebanon. These represent a much more toxic and long-range damage to the entire ecosystem of the target area and adjacent regions. Enjoy the increased cancers and concurrent bone loss, Israeli "leaders."
What does dunams mean? it doesn't appear to be in the Webster dictionary. Might not seem too important in this disgusting mess, but I am curious, is it an acre?
The "Conservation" movement started in large part amongst American Republicans. Now of course Conservatives have loathing and contempt for the environment and anyone who expresses concern about it. God forbid a "Conservative" should be concerned about conserving anything.
Thanks Israel, for contributing to the destruction of our planet, Earth. You should be so ashamed that you stick your heads in the oil soaked black sands on the once beautiful white beaches YOU ruined permanently as well as killing all manner of sea creatures like Sea Turtles and various other marine species. Now that I've said that, I suppose I'm "Anti-Semitic". I'm not, because my parents raised me correctly to accept all peoples, no matter what their race, religion or colour, unlike you who think you are the only people who deserve to live on this planet. Talk about an ego! It's really no wonder to me anymore why so many people despise you. And I really pity you for that. YOU started the trouble in the Middle East and YOU are the ones who need to stop it. I'm really sorry it's come to this. You seem to be a nation of Hate and Intolerance. I really hope you eventually see the errors of your ways and make some positive changes. Now go clean up the mess YOU made and quit whining!
Sometimes whn you kill a cancer you damage some healthy cells in the process. Israel did nothing wrong.
I couldn't have said it better. Israel cannot achieve any gain by destroying the livelyhood of a nation, but I doubt that Lebanon can collect retribution for Israel's indiscriminate and savage attack on its infrastructure, for a simple reason - the unjust Uncle SAM will come to Israel's defense and rescue her regardless of right or wrong. Rogue states without a doubt.
The oil desater will reach Israel coast. And they intend to take us to international courts. We blew up our image in the world, we killed innocents and destroyed houses, bridges, power stations, mosques, social and humanitarian centers. We destroyed everything we could and we should not have to punish people for their support of their resistance to our arrogance and supremacy. Tell me sincerely who we are in the middle-east? and what have we done? Are we honest enought with our selves to look at the massacres our soldiers and planes committed in Lebanon? The consequences will be far worst than what we have in mind, if we did!
Spewing his waste & fouling the ether waves once again. Is there no way of cleaning this waste up for once & for all?
Yaakoob, it is who's the whinner. Israeli is willing to rehabilitate the damage done, either with the Huzbillah intent, or in the process of the Grat Offensive Victorious of the Israeli people and Army (basically, in the case of the Liberal Democratic country such as Israel, seem to be the same)stood up and conducted in 34days of historical results. Now, the People of Israel, Yaakoub, are going to discharge the immense challenge for not only the Rehabilitation of the Gallil- by the way, it never entered your mind that it was the NJF that for almost a century has rehabilitated the whole Land of Israel which was desolated for centuries- with the same entreprising spirit as it did anything else.
Israel freely chose to direct its military to devastate the oil supply of Lebanon, knowing full well the ecological damage it would cause as well as what it would do to that country's tourism. Now they whine about forest fires. Israel should be made to pay for this ecological disaster since they caused it. What irony if the winds should shift and blow the penetrating sludge southward from Nahariya to Netanya.
The first bombing raid was to inflict damage to the fuel storage and power station and petrol stations. The result of this fuel leak into the lebanon coast which will take years to clean. So, Isreal is the last country to talk about the environment.
By bombing the fuel installations, Israel knew that it would pollute Lebanon's shoreline and therefore ruin it's fledging tourist industry. An act of economic warfare, and collective punishment against the entire Lebanese people. Hopefully this will backfire on Israel and their beaches will be destroyed as well, the more I see the more I beleive Israel was jealous of Lebanon's economic revival, this was not just a war against Hezbollah, it was a war to prevent Lebanon becoming strong economically. Israel was jealous of its neighbour. Afterall there is only so many tourists to go round.
Death toll in Lebanon up to 1300 today as bodies many of children are recovered. And Israels is worried about grass fires.
Israel is concerned about recovering from a few grass fires ('environmental damage'????) I can only imagine the environmental damage that Israel inflicted upon the Lebanese people. Please Israel get your priorities straight. What about all the innocent lives that the war of nonsense took???